Erotic Love Poems of Greece and Rome Erotic Love Poems of Greece and Rome A Collection of New Translations Second Edition Stephen Bertman University of Windsor (Canada) Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher David Miano, Senior Field Acquisitions Editor Michelle Piehl, Project Editor Alia Bales, Production Editor Jess Estrella, Senior Graphic Designer Stephanie Kohl, Licensing Coordinator Natalie Piccotti, Senior Marketing Manager Kassie Graves, Vice President of Editorial Jamie Giganti, Director of Academic Publishing Copyright © 2019 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, me- chanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permission of Cognella, Inc. 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ISBN: 978-1-5165-4798-2 (pbk) / 978-1-5165-4799-9 (br) OTHER BOOKS BY STEPHEN BERTMAN The Eight Pillars of Greek Wisdom Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia The Healing Power of Ancient Literature Doorways through Time Art and the Romans Hyperculture Cultural Amnesia Distracted Doctoring With love to Elaine (Proverbs 31:10–31) Table of Contents Introduction xv Love and Poetry xv The Challenge of Translation xx Timeline xxiii Part 1: Erotic Love Poems of Greece 1 Homer 2 Aphrodite Directs a Love-Scene 3 Andromache Begs Her Husband to “Make Love Not War” 7 Calypso Says Farewell to Odysseus 11 The Adulterous Love Affair of Ares and Aphrodite 13 Odysseus and His Wife Penelope Are Reunited 17 The Homeric Hymns 20 A Naked Aphrodite Is Dressed 21 Tit for Tat 22 One-Night Stand 23 Homeric Epigrams 25 A Senior Citizen’s Prayer 26 Mimnermus 27 The Preciousness of Love 28 Sappho 29 Invocation 30 A Manifesto of Love 31 Tongue-Tied 33 Beyond Reach 34 Night 35 ix Theognis 36 Persona Non Grata 37 Blessed Oblivion 38 Horses and Boys 39 Anacreon 40 On Eros’s Anvil 41 The Poet Strikes Out 42 the Anacreontea 43 My Time’s Not Up 44 A Greek Don Juan 45 A Mail-Order Portrait of My Love 47 Close to You 49 No Goodbyes 50 A Wasted Education 51 Ibycus 52 Spring 53 Too Many Times Around the Track 54 Euripides 55 The Perils of Passion 56 Apollonius of Rhodes 57 Medea Is Ignited by Passion 58 Theocritus 59 The Ogre and the Mermaid 60 Moschus 64 Armed and Dangerous 65 The Sea 66 Bion 67 Prayer to the Evening Star 68 The Alexandrian Erotic Fragment 69 Jilted 70 The Greek Anthology 72 Adaeus 73 The Direct Approach Is Best 74 Antipater of Thessalonica 75 Love Isn’t Priceless 76 x Asclepiades 77 Locked Out 78 Chastity 79 Marcus Argentarius 80 Surprise! 81 Skinny 82 True Love 83 Meleager 84 Flowers for Heliodora 85 Paulus Silentarius 86 A Vintage Love 87 Philetas of Samos 88 Dedication 89 Philodemus 90 On the Edge 91 Ultimatum 92 Erectile Dysfunction 93 Rufinus 94 Too Late 95 Beauty Contest 96 Scynthius 97 A Penile Reprimand 98 Strato 99 Ripeness 100 An Erotic Riddle 101 Anonymous 102 Seasonal Fruit 103 The Greater Fire 104 Love for Sale 105 Metamorphosis on the Beach 106 A Lover’s Prayer 107 Part 2: Erotic Love Poems of Rome 109 Catullus 110 In Your Presence 111 Little Bird 113 xi Pavane for a Dead Canary 114 Her Promise 115 Defiance 116 Enough 117 I Don’t Care 118 Trapped 119 Affidavit 120 Return 121 Revelation 122 Emasculation 123 Special Delivery 126 Redemption 128 Vergil 129 Dido Becomes Obsessed with Love 130 Dido and Aeneas Make Love 132 Aeneas Encounters Dido’s Ghost 133 Horace 134 In the Woods 135 Revenge 136 Mismatch 137 Horoscope 138 Hag 139 Repulsion 141 Tibullus 142 A Simple Life 143 Cursed 144 Magical Charms 145 Sulpicia 146 Birthday Plans 147 Plans Revised 148 A Curt Reply 149 Propertius 150 Till Death Do Us Part 151 The Journey 152 Apparition 154 Ovid 157 Pygmalion 158 xii Echo and Narcissus 161 Orpheus and Eurydice 164 Midday 167 Abortion 169 By Love Commanded 171 The College of Erotic Knowledge 172 Where the Girls Are 175 Make the Most of What You’ve Got 177 Martial 179 Popularity 180 Orders 181 Disqualified 182 Pompeiian Graffiti 183 Impermanence 184 The Pervigilium Veneris 185 Ode to Venus 186 Translator’s Envoi 188 Glossary 189 Recommended Reading 201 The Ancient Near East 201 Ancient Egypt 201 Ancient Mesopotamia 201 Ancient Israel 202 Classical Civilization 202 General 202 Ancient Greece 203 Ancient Rome 204 Questions for Discussion 207 Index 209 About the Author 215 xiii INTRODUCTION Love and Poetry rotic desire is as old as the human race, and erotic literature Eas old as civilization. Painted on fragile papyri disinterred from Egypt’s sands and imprinted on clay tablets unearthed from Mesopotamia’s wastes are the world’s oldest love poems, dating back 3,500 years and more. These records testify not only to erot- ic passion, but also to the impulse to articulate that passion in written form. I am your first love, I am your garden, scented with spices, fragrant with flowers. Deep runs my channel, smoothed by your tillage, cooled by the North Wind, filled by the Nile.* So wrote an Egyptian scribe in ancient days, even as a Mesopo- tamian poet wrote the words that follow: Squeeze yourself into me as the hand presses flour into an open cup. Pound yourself into me as the fist rams flour into a cup craving to be filled** Such poems teach us that erotic passion has been an intrinsic component of human nature from civilization’s beginnings. Yet while love is spontaneous and free, poetry is, by definition, formal and structurally disciplined. While passion is personal and * Translated by Stephen Bertman. From Stephen Bertman, Doorways through Time: The Romance of Archaeology (Los Angeles and New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1986). ** Translated by Stephen Bertman. From Stephen Bertman, Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia (New York: Facts On File, 2003). xv individualistic, literature is bound by tradition and convention. Love and passion are natural and driven by emotion; literature and poetry, artificial and constrained by reason. How then can we account for the paradoxical marriage of love and poetry, for this age-old wedding of opposites? First and foremost, love poems are expressions of feelings, but feelings can be chaotic unless they are given form. Such form en- dows feelings with a structure and compression they would oth- erwise lack. Their structure makes them more intelligible; their compression lends them power. If a poem, then, is like a well-wrapped package, to whom is it sent? Surely, to the person the poet loves (or has come to hate); to other sympathetic listeners if the object of the poet’s desire will not accept delivery; or even to the poet himself to make life more livable by externalizing frustration and the pain of rejec- tion through the vehicle of the written word. Indeed, through the very act of literary composition, the poet can compose emotions, and in the process gain rational perspective and a renewed sense of erotic direction. The writing of poetry can thus help make a poet’s world make more sense, or at least make it bearable. As a thing of beauty, a poem may also celebrate erotic plea- sure found, lost, or longed for. Here, form becomes the servant of art, transmuting otherwise ordinary words into noble statements and bestowing the possibility of permanence on what might oth- erwise be only transitory and forgotten. It is sculpted form, not inchoate feeling, that gives ultimate satisfaction to poets, and it is form as much as content that has enabled their ancient poems to transcend the millennia and reach our own day, granting them an immortality that life itself withheld. As the Biblical Song of Songs declares: “Love is as strong as death”—or at least, we may add, as long as love is enshrined in verse. Yet, if love poetry took root at civilization’s inception, it did not flower until many centuries later. This is in large part due to the evolution of literacy itself. Though writing was invented in the ancient Near East, the types of writing that developed there— hieroglyphic and cuneiform—were highly complex systems con- sisting of hundreds upon hundreds of separate characters. Com- xvi munication through writing thus became the prerogative of the learned few, and the written word was largely reserved for the formal prayers and archives of temple and palace, propagandistic inscriptions, and the calculating records of merchants. Compos- ing love poetry, and reading it, would have been a leisure activity limited to a highly educated and numerically small elite. Indeed, even the political structure of Egyptian and Mesopotamian so- ciety conspired against the popularity of love poetry, since the individual and the aspirations of the individual were regarded subservient to the theocratic state. For erotic poetry to flower, what was needed was the democratization of love: an ideological environment that celebrated the individual and a simplified writ- ing system that enabled such individuals to transcribe and read the personal messages of the human heart. This very environ- ment arose for the first time not in the Near East, but in Greece in the seventh century BCE, and its instrument was the alphabet, a Phoenician invention that the Greeks imported and adapted to their own humanistic, rather than theocratic, purposes.